Priorities change when you retire. Take cars, for example. As you will know we have (or at least Christine has) the Clio, small car, plenty of miles per gallon, low maintenance costs. None of these were a priority when I was at work.
The company car priorities were somewhat different. Comfort, because I spent somewhere between twenty and thirty hours a week driving. Climate Control to combat the long hot English summers! Sound systems and safety features like airbags and ABS brakes were a must. But then you got to the really important things.
Cup Holders. Life on the go could not exist without cup holders. They are needed to hold the water bottle, compulsory on all journeys. Another for the Red Bull can to keep awake. A third is required for the 'coffee to go’ from the motorway service station, always too hot and never enough time to sit in the service station and wait for it to cool.
A flat area behind the steering wheel is required to hold the ‘Post-It’ note pad and a pen to make notes whenever a thought comes into the head. If I wait until I complete my journey I have forgotten it.
A space next to the left hand is required to hold the sandwich and sausage roll that goes with the coffee, this needs to be a secure area because if you brake and the sandwich flies into the passenger footwell you have a problem, you can’t reach it and because it’s there you want it all the more. It may be that by tweaking the steering wheel to the left you can make the sandwich come toward you and just be able to reach it. Not the simplest manoeuvre at 80 miles an hour on the motorway.
Coupled with this sandwich holding area needs to be a knob of some sort, may even be the gear lever, over which to hang a carrier bag to take the wrappers from the food. And that’s another point, do the producers of the sandwiches know how difficult they are to open using one hand at 80 miles an hour. Surely they should be able to come up with a quick release package for people on the go.
The next important feature is the passenger seat which has two purposes, three if you include someone sitting in it. The first is the diary. The seat must have a ridge which holds the diary in place should you need to brake suddenly whilst eating your sausage roll. It is essential that you have access to the diary at all times. The hands free phone is constantly ringing and appointments have to be fixed. You don’t want to book two golf days on the same date. The passenger seat also has to hold the lap top, during those spells of inactivity on the motorway when all three lanes are stopped it is time saving to pull in your e-mails.
And finally a pocket near your right hand is essetial to hold the Black Book open to the current day. It is inconceivable that you would start any journey without the book in place. The list of jobs for today will undoubtedly contain some phone calls and they can be made on the journey.
So that’s it, the requirements of a company car. Plus of course a boot big enough for your golf clubs, gym gear, swimmers and suitcase not to mention brief case and work related stuff. I don’t need any of that now. Do I miss it? Sometimes, but at the moment being at home’s good.
